


No Better Love

by fairmanor



Series: Tough Talks [4]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Affection, Being Seen, Books, Episode: s04e12 Singles Week, Fluff, M/M, Patrick has trouble communicating, Patrick is a Bookworm, Repressed Feelings, Saying I Love You, minor internalised homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26465092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor
Summary: It might have been hard for David to hear Patrick say ‘I love you’, but it was even harder for Patrick to say it.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: Tough Talks [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918438
Comments: 77
Kudos: 246





	No Better Love

**Author's Note:**

> \- This one in the series is just me self-projecting, because a) affection makes me break out in hives and b) I’m really just a block tower of Hozier lyrics and Tolkien quotes masquerading as a person.

“Affection’s not one of your strong suits, is it, Paddy?”

Nearly ten years after that had been said, Patrick is no longer sure who’d said it: Rachel or his mother. It could have come from either mouth. Perhaps it was Rachel’s, sly and funny, quick and unhesitant to roast Patrick just as hard as, if not harder than, his friends did. It could just have easily been Marcy’s, passed off a joke with a tinge of thin-lipped regret, observing the way Patrick would cringe away on instinct from hugs and kisses that he didn’t initiate himself.

Whoever had said it, they’d been right. Affection isn’t a strong suit of Patrick’s, and he knows it. And for some reason, the idea of that weakness has always filled him with shame. He doesn’t like it, thinking about how he would duck away from every other head rub his father would give him or tense up at the way his great aunt would wipe round his mouth with her napkin. It’s a strange insecurity to have, really, one’s own dislike of affection. But an insecurity is what it is, and some days it feels as raw and tender as the missing scale on Smaug’s underbelly.

Now, _there’s_ a book he’s read a thousand times. While he was packing for his own unexpected journey into nowhere at all, throwing random items into his case quickly as though he were being evicted, Patrick spared no time to even think about placing _The Hobbit_ on top of his clothing and shoes and zipping it up. The tattered cover and old, peeling ‘Whiteoak High School’ library stamp glued on the front page – a reminder that the book is the only thing he’s ever stolen – are familiar. They smell familiar, and the words have their own spot in his hands; nestled, cradled, homely.

He’s reading it now, sat up with two pillows cushioned at the small of his back in his bed at Ray’s. He used to make time to read it at least once every turn of the season when he was a teenager, finding comfort in the dips and turns of the story and its scenery when the weather outside would change, or when he was packing for college. Nowadays he can just dip in and out of the pages, not really needing to read the whole thing, having done it hundreds of times already. He’s reading about Smaug, stoic and hard on the outside, weak and killable on the in. A character he used to absurdly relate to.

_"Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong, strong."_

Patrick’s always been a bookworm. Stories are fascinating to him. It's so magical, so immersive and so _fascinating_ , the way opening the pages of a book feels like getting a glimpse into the core of a stranger’s soul. Someone he would never meet, yet they spoke to him so viscerally as if they knew his mind. He would sit for hours after a particularly striking one and think, _how come I didn’t think of that? Those plotlines, that prose? I’m human too. I’m the same species. But our minds are all so different._ He used to sneak pages in between subs on the hockey pitch and shut himself away in his room for hours, trying to read a book all in one sitting. It’s funny to him now, the way he used to do that. But it’s also sad. He really would do anything so he didn’t have to face real life.

He reads romances, too, though isn’t as fond of them as David is. He remembers once, early on in the relationship, when they’d been sat stargazing on a picnic bench on a hill outside Elmdale and traded favorite things between the table. Movies, books, foods – even colors, just to be extra cliché. Patrick’s question of favorite genre was immediately snapped up by David.

“Romcom,” he’d said, like he’d said it a million times before.

“Why?” Patrick had asked.

David had shrugged, an adorable little blush coming to sit in the dimples of his cheeks. “They’re just so – so _easy_ , you know? So simple. All that love, all those perfect moments that you dream about, they’re just there for the watching. So why not?”

Patrick couldn’t help but agree. He still agrees now, even though he feels like he’s done chasing those moments. They greet him every morning with the ring of the bell above the store.

But still, affection doesn’t come naturally. He works at it every day, the roots of his motivation stuck deep in the words that his dad had bestowed when Patrick was nineteen and had just broken up with Rachel for the second time. Clint had sat him down and told him that you need to work for relationships, need to give as much as you take. David didn’t feel like work, not in the slightest, but Patrick still felt like he had to give.

So he gives. He kisses David every morning, he rubs his shoulders in the customer-free lulls in the store, he hugs him from behind when the day’s over and thinks about how lucky he is to work with his boyfriend every day. He takes note of others, too. Watches how Alexis boops David on the nose to say hi and bye, the way Moira pats people’s cheeks in condescending greeting, the way Stevie will tug David down to whisper some gossip in his ear then watch how he grips her arm and gasps in response. Touch comes so naturally to everyone, like it’s just something to wash down words with and not an entire language on its own.

Because while affection doesn’t come easily to Patrick, by God does he value it.

The evening after he sat dipping in and out of his favorite book, David is curled up with him in the bed, Patrick’s laptop and a bowl of popcorn balanced between them. The credits are just about to roll.

“Can I tell you something?” Patrick says quietly.

David turns to him, an eyebrow raised. “Sure.”

“The night of our first date, in the car.”

“Mhm? What about it?”

“If you hadn’t kissed me first, I don’t know whether I would’ve had the courage to.”

David is quiet for a moment. Then, with a little grin, “Really?”

“Nope, I think I would’ve been too shy.”

“That’s kind of cute. Imagining you going all shy and blushing. You _were_ shy on our first date, though.”

“You think?”

“Oh, yeah. Practically a recluse.”

Patrick swats at his arm. “Okay, well you did bring someone else along to said date, so you can’t blame me for thinking I’d got it all wrong.”

David smiles, humming through his nose, and snuggles in closer to Patrick. Patrick reaches out tentatively and strokes his hand through David’s hair. It’s so right. It’s the rightest thing in his life, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

“I just don’t think that sort of thing comes naturally to me.”

They’re someone else’s words. A paraphrase of them, in fact. But he’s heard them on a mental loop for so long, so many times that even the voice that said them has worn off. They might as well be his.

David looks up as Patrick closes the lid of the laptop gently and lowers the brightness of the lamp. “I know. I can tell.”

Patrick meets David’s eye, a pang of guilt flooding through him. “Wait, you can tell? David, I –” he sighs. “It’s not that I don’t want to be affectionate. I just…”

David starts to stroke his forearm, pressing a little kiss to the skin just below Patrick’s shirt sleeve. He does that a lot, and Patrick likes it.

“Do you want me to tell you what I think I’m seeing here? It might help you work it out.”

Patrick sinks back into the pillows a bit and nods. David continues stroking Patrick’s arm as he speaks.

“I think you’ve spent a lot of time thinking care and affection and things like that come in separate boxes. Platonic, romantic, marital, familial. And this is still all new to you, in comparison to the past thirty years –”

Patrick titters. “Don’t remind me,” he says quietly. Bitterly.

David shushes him. “So I think the lines have become a little too rigid. To be more blunt about it, you never really expected to get this kind of affection from – well, someone like me, until very recently, did you?”

Patrick nods, feeling something shift like the winding of a clock inside him. Feels the gears come unstuck.

“And so I think you have trouble asking for what you want,” David says simply, running a finger up and down the dry, freckled skin of Patrick’s arm as he speaks. He's calm, as though he has no idea he’s just articulated everything Patrick’s spent months trying to work out in a few short words. Unbidden, Patrick’s throat tightens with a lump, and David breathes out with a soft ‘oh’ as he takes note of the tears in Patrick’s eyes.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says, sitting up to take Patrick in his arms. “You’re okay, baby.”

“I know,” Patrick says, “I know.”

David clears the bed of its bits and pieces and lays them both down. Patrick tries so hard to cry more, tries to let David wrap him up and shush him, but it won’t come. He sniffs once, harshly, and scrubs at his eyes, throwing David a perfunctory smile of reassurance before he turns out the light.

****

_I’m going to tell him. Soon, I’m going to tell him._

The thought has been following Patrick around for days. Well, that’s a lie. It’s been following him round for months, but neither of them were ready for it. When he walked into the store and for the first time didn’t feel utterly blinded by the beauty of David, that’s how he knew it was time.

 _I love you._ He’s said it plenty to his parents, because he would feel strange not to. It bookends all their conversations. He’s said it to Rachel, because he meant it. He can say it to David. He can.

He’s going to do it today, he thinks, and sustains the thought right until the moment he walks into the store. It seems like David’s whole family are here – David’s whole family _are_ here, he notices, catching sight of Johnny trying not to drop candles and Stevie digging through their snack drawer in the stock room. Moira is barking about something and Alexis is practically lying down on the counter, rifling through the small items. When Patrick enters, two drinks balanced in his hand, David shoots him an exasperated look. Patrick smiles, and rather than indulging David by mirroring his look he takes a moment to look around at the amount of love surrounding David at this very moment in time. All the different ways they express it. He knew there were times when David and Alexis had to be more like friends than siblings, when Johnny and Moira had to learn a love that should have come with birth, when David and Stevie were more than friends. Blurred lines everywhere, love mixed up in love with no particular label to it, no rhyme or reason. They’re all settled like soft snow now, showering David in everything he deserves. And with a dark, heavy punch to his stomach, Patrick wonders if his simple, quiet love is enough.

He sighs silently, handing David his coffee and deciding to put off the confession for today. He worked hard for it, and now his love for David is so pure, so strong. He worked so damn hard to knock down the barriers of his past so that he could even begin to let himself love David. What if it wasn’t enough? What if, to love David, for David to love you, more needed to happen? What if dramas had to be worked through, drifting apart had to happen, life had to be upturned then plonked back on its feet again?

Eventually, David’s family filter out and David cut his shift short to do some vendor runs, so left at lunchtime with a kiss. And Patrick is left alone with his thoughts. He brought his copy of _The Hobbit_ with him to see him through the dead hours that bracket every Thursday afternoon. The cracked spine of the book opens more easily on the very middle pages, so Patrick lets the book just fall open.

_“A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold sigh, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in the flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped.”_

That’s why he came here, isn’t it? To tremble and break. To leap.

That night, he calls David and asks him to come over for a few hours. He wants to try something.

They go for a walk first, circling the warm golden fields that border Schitt’s Creek, checking out the nice houses on the outskirts of town. David knows something is up with him, knows Patrick needs him there for cheering up. Instead of making for the bed after dinner, Patrick silently gestures for David to sit in the wicker seat with its white hemp cushion by the windowsill. Once David’s got himself settled, Patrick slowly, slowly lowers himself into David’s lap, drinking in the sight of the sunset grazing the tops of the houses across the road and letting himself sink deeper into David’s warm weight. It’s the way he used to sit with his parents and older cousins when he was a kid, until he got into a relationship and had to start being the bigger one, the one in David’s position. It’s comforting, this hint of the familial and unconditional in something he’d spent the past few months boxing off as romantic.

“Well, this is new,” David murmurs. He rests a hand on Patrick’s bicep, smoothing the wrinkles in his blue shirt.

“I know,” Patrick says, “I needed it.”

“Any particular reason?”

Patrick sighs, the movement pushing him further into David’s lap. “I’ve just been thinking about…stuff. Like what we were talking about the other day.”

David nods his head like he knows what is coming. “About you asking for what you want.”

“Mm.”

“Is there anything you want right now?” David says slowly.

“…Reassurance.”

David squeezes Patrick’s arm with a gentleness that makes Patrick relax. “Reassurance about what?”

“That I’m enough for you.”

The words come out almost imperceptibly, buoyed by a self-conscious waver in his tone. David sighs heavily, a long, almost relieved sigh, and tugs Patrick closer. The sun has surpassed the gap between the houses across the street and is shining softly on them now. Patrick can see the undersides of copper in the long, soft hairs on David’s arms, can see just how dark his beautiful skin is underneath.

“I’m proud of you for asking, honey.”

Patrick nods once, forcing down the tinges of embarrassment that have crawled up unbidden. Because Patrick Brewer never asks for help. Maybe he should start. “I don’t want you to think I’m doubting our relationship, or that I – want out, or anything. I just look at all the things you already have sometimes and wonder if I’m giving you enough.”

A moment passes. Then another. Patrick wonders if he’s upset David, and is about to apologise when David speaks up. It almost makes Patrick jump.

“Do you remember what I said on our fourth date about romcoms?”

Patrick furrows his brow and picks at a thread on his cuff as he recalls. “You said you like them because they’re simple. Easy. Full of those –”

“Perfect moments that you dream about, yeah,” David finishes in unison, chuckling and pulling Patrick closer. “And do you know why I don’t watch them half as much as I used to?”

David doesn’t answer his own question, and Patrick doesn’t try to. The answer shrouds them, unspoken, like a blanket woven from the bricks of Rose Apothecary and the floral pattern on the bedspread and the sunset outside. Patrick reaches down and takes David’s hand, lacing them together. Patrick will never get over how small he feels, and how much he loves feeling small.

“You give me everything, Patrick,” David whispers, and Patrick can hear the strain that the sincerity is having on his voice. “Everything.”

They don’t move from the window until it’s dark and gets too cold to sit by the glass.

“Come on, get to bed,” David says, practically hauling Patrick off his lap. “Alexis’ stupid Singles Week starts tomorrow and the store’s going to be absolutely packed.”

****

So he tells him.

Patrick puts aside all the boxes, all the work that never really needed to happen, all the expectations and hangups and anxieties, and he tells him. Because he might have said the words before, hundreds if not thousands of times, but never in this context. Not to describe a love that he barely has the words to explain. There’s no doubt in it, none of the rigidity that David spoke of a few nights ago. It’s soft and full of want. Full of Patrick saying all the things he’s been trying to say all along. He’s giving, as he always is, but he’s also saying _please, David, let me take. This is what I want. From you. From us. This is how I want things to be. Wrap me up in you, make me yours._

The day passes in a blur after. David comes back with the tea, jabbering about Alexis and Ted kissing. He burns his tongue on his tea. He doesn’t care. David kisses it better later. He kisses a lot of things better later, and they forget about dinner completely in a bid to get each other in the bed and make known the language they’ve been speaking there since the very first day, only this time there’s a foundation of _words,_ ones they can say again and again and again. Ad infinitum, but never ad nauseam.

They’re lying in the dark, basking in it all, neither able to sleep. Patrick’s so warm that he doesn’t think the sun has set until he opens his eyes and realises it’s pitch black outside, nothing but the moonlight illuminating the furniture in his room. The room he’s grown to love in the same way he loves people.

“There was a lot missing in the things I said yesterday,” David whispers, tracing patterns in the sparse, soft hair on Patrick’s chest.

“Oh?”

“Mm. It’s just we hadn’t said I love you then.”

Patrick smiles. “Say it again.”

“You’ve asked me that six times now.”

“Seven. Say it again.”

“I love you,” David says loudly, right up to Patrick’s ear, and Patrick clamps a hand over his mouth.

“Shh! Ray’s in!”

“Oh, he’s heard worse.”

Patrick glances towards the wall that connects his and Ray’s bedrooms then back at David, and bursts into badly contained laughter. When he calms down, David leans up and captures his lips in quite possibly the softest kiss he’s ever given Patrick. Though he’s lying down, Patrick still feels his knees go weak.

“I don’t need anything more than you,” David whispers. “You don’t need to work to keep me, or to define things.” He breaks eye contact, so Patrick holds his breath and waits for the sincerity.

“Everything’s just been so simple with you. You’re the easiest person I’ve ever had to love. It’s so easy to love you.”

Patrick breathes out, and with it his eyes fill with tears. He pulls David in again, but this time it’s to hold him close to his chest.

He watches David fall asleep, exhausted from the high emotions of the day and then from coming twice. He turns his head to the window again but this time his gaze falls on the bedside table, where _The Hobbit_ is sat. In the dark, he can just see the sheen of the red jewels on the front cover. He looks at where the bookmark is placed, and knows by muscle memory alone exactly where it’s sitting in the book. Which lines it’s resting on.

_“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”_

God, David is everything to him. He’s his boyfriend, his partner. His family. He’s his best friend. If David can be all that by simply being himself, then Patrick knows he never needs to be anything more or less than what he’s always been, as well. With David, he can take whatever kind of love he needs and enjoy the giving of it.

Before he closes his eyes, he looks over his love’s hair, his softly rising chest, the flawless soft skin that covers his eyes. And he knows from now on that every decision with David in it would be the easiest decision of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments do a happy writer make.
> 
> \- Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://fairmanor.tumblr.com/), if you so desire.


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